by Alan Handley
“Obviously blackmail.”
She was not impressed.
“Oh, really! It was a sad day for the world when you discovered circulating libraries.”
“But how else can you explain it? You know she didn’t cast that many shows.”
“Maybe she had an income. Maybe she had property. People do get five hundred dollars a month without resorting to blackmail.”
“But that would explain everything. Why she was murdered.”
“Here we go again. Timmy, look me in the eye.” I did. “Do you really believe all that junk?”
“No, I guess not. Not really.”
“Then that’s all right. Otherwise I might start worrying.” I stuffed the bank book back in the Youth and Beauty Book and tossed it on the floor.
“Well, what do we do now?”
“I know a man who used to be in naval intelligence during the war. I’ll bet he could help us. We could certainly use a little intelligence around here. Do you want me to call him up?”
“Let me try first before we send for the fleet,” I said.
“Well, I only wanted to be helpful. Have you eaten?”
“No. Have you?”
“I’m starved. Let’s go to Sardi’s for lunch.”
“Oh, no we won’t,” I said.
“The murderer always returns to the scene of his crime.”
“My pal!”
“Well, why not? You’ve done all the wrong things so far. One more couldn’t make much difference. We can drop in at Nellie’s office casual-like and you can get a quick swipe at that doorknob, and we can pitch that damned book in a corner of her office and just forget all about it.”
I helped her up off the floor.
“Okay. What can we lose?”
She went into the bedroom to dress while I had another drink, but it didn’t help much. I started to get depressed all over again. I took my drink and leaned against the bedroom door.
“You know, Maggie, if you cut down on your drinking and got more sleep you’d be a good-looking girl. Somebody might even marry you again.”
“Why, thank you, darling. But who? And why the overwhelming flattery? What have I done to deserve it?” She stopped brushing her hair and looked at me in the mirror. For some reason I felt a little embarrassed.
“It just seems kind of pointless all this nipping about, frittering around in the theater. Where does it get you?” She swiveled around from her dressing table.
“What about you?”
“Never mind me. Besides, I can’t do anything else. The theater’s all I know.”
“You did all right in the army. People told me. I asked.”
“Oh, the army. That’s different. Latch on to a good sergeant and you can’t miss.”
“It’s none of my business, I know,” Maggie said earnestly. “But do you mean to just keep on like this…you know what I mean…sort of…I mean, not ever…well, you know what I mean…” She finished lamely, strangely shy for her.
Yes, of course, I knew what she meant. And no, of course I didn’t mean to keep on like this. I was a man with a plan. A three-year plan. Operation Hollywood. I wanted to be an actor! So I made a bargain with myself while waiting in a cigarette camp near Le Havre to be shipped home. Three years to get a good part on Broadway or back to the salt mines.
It all seemed so simple—in Le Havre.
Who gets all the best parts in New York? Movie actors. Okay, so get to be a movie actor. How? Well, first you’ve got to be seen in the right places, get a little publicity. That’s the magic—publicity. And in the right places you’ll meet the right people who’ll maybe give you a small part and then maybe your picture in the paper and bingo!—a screen test and a contract. Six months on the coast and six months in New York for a play. Then every day is Christmas and you even plan whose stocking will be hanging up beside yours.
That was thirty-five months ago and gives you a rough idea how punchy you can get after four years in the army.
Four weeks more and Operation Hollywood would end with a whimper and with it my chance for the big money. But a bargain’s a bargain. I hope I hadn’t forgotten how to pilot a bulldozer.
There was no point in telling all this to Maggie—now. If things had only worked out differently…
“Timmy, what is the matter with you?”
“What? Oh, nothing. Just indulging in a little wishful thinking.”
“What about?”
“Hoping I’m not going to spend the rest of my all-too-brief life running away from a murder rap.”
“Oh.” Maggie turned back to the mirror and finished her face. I went over to the closet and got out her mink coat and helped her on with it. I wrapped my arms around her and stood that way for a moment. I needed someone to hang on to. I buried my face in the shoulder of her coat. It was cool and faintly perfumed. She reached up and patted my cheek.
“Now stop worrying. Everything’s going to be all right.”
While I was out in the hall putting on my coat she brought the Youth and Beauty Book.
“Here.” She handed it to me. “You ought to be able to drop it in a corner easily while you’re messing up your fingerprints.”
“I expect so.” I stuck it in my breast pocket. “But you know as well as I do that fingerprints or no, eventually they’re going to find out I was in Nellie’s office this morning.”
“Nonsense.”
“It isn’t nonsense. They always do.”
“How?”
“I don’t know, but they always do. One leaves spoors or something.”
“Does one? How awful.”
“And unless they find out who did it, I can’t prove I didn’t, when it comes right down to it.”
“Then by all means we must find out who did do it.”
It seemed so simple the way she said it.
CHAPTER FOUR
I LOOKED AT MY WATCH as we pulled up in front of Sardi’s. Only four hours since I had been here before and it seemed like four years.
The meter said eighty cents and Maggie gave me a dollar, which I gave to the driver, and we got out.
The sidewalk in front of Sardi’s is strictly Actors’ Equity property. From ten in the morning till one at night you can always find one standing there. Musicians have their own Wailing Wall around Fiftieth Street somewhere; vaudevillians in front of the Palace; the radio people, a sheltered lot, have theirs on the third floor of NBC or CBS on Madison. Models are around Grand Central and Park, but actors are loyal to Forty-fourth Street between Eighth and Broadway. And they were there in full force today, and it didn’t take long for Maggie and me to find out that Nellie had been discovered.
Just about my most unfavorite actor in the world would have to have the pleasure of telling us what we already knew only too well. He spied us standing by the curb and came rushing over. Ted Kent is his name, or at least that is what he uses. I suppose the basic reason I don’t like him is very simple; he always gets all the parts I want and when you get right down to it, that’s the main reason most actors don’t like other actors they don’t like.
Ted is about my height, maybe a couple of inches shorter without his trick you-can-be-taller-than-she-is shoes and is a perfect example of a successful Operation Hollywood. The right people, the publicity, the small part, the screen test and the Hollywood contract. Only they didn’t pick up his option so he headed straight back to Broadway with quite a bit of money and new teeth, trying to get that part that will shoot him back to the coast again.
As he greeted us, he gave me a very small hello, which was all right by me, and Maggie a very big kiss—which wasn’t.
“Maggie, darling. Have you heard?” He was a darling boy, too. “Nellie is dead!” And he sort of stood back on one foot and waited for us to take it big. We must have both felt it was better to play dumb and we did what was obviously expected.
“No!” said Maggie. “Who did it?”
Ted gave her what I thought was a funny look and said, “But, da
rling, nobody did it. She just collapsed. Heart, I expect.”
“Are you sure?” I said.
“What do you mean, am I sure? Of course I’m sure. Heart failure, I think, or drunk—you know she drank like a fish. Anyway, she fell over on that spindle she had on her desk, you know.” I admitted I did know. “And she died. File and forget, I say.” He practically giggled at that one. Maggie and I looked at each other. I think my sigh of relief must have reached the East River.
“How do you know?” Maybe he wasn’t straight on his facts. Maybe this was all just a trick by the police to find out who really did it. When you’ve convinced yourself that you are a key witness in a murder scene it’s a little disconcerting to be told that it isn’t a murder at all and just a simple case of alcohol or heart failure. I can’t say I was sorry that it was turning out this way, but I’m afraid the ham in me was feeling cheated as if I had been fired from a show before it even started rehearsals.
Ted tried to wither me with a look, but I don’t wither very easy by guys like Ted. “Everybody knows. The police have been here asking questions and having a big time. They’re still up in her office now waiting for the meat wagon.” You could tell in his day he’d been in some pretty lousy shows, too. A couple of other people joined our clump attracted by Ted’s overloud voice—which was the idea—and, goosed up by a bigger audience, Ted really put out.
“Libby Drew found her…she was just dropping in, making the rounds, and saw her lying on her desk, blood all over the place running over the floor…”
“But…” I started to interrupt but Maggie silenced me with a stiff poke in the ribs. Ted chose to ignore my attempted interruption and went merrily on, practically drooling at the mouth.
“Of course, you know Libby, sly puss that she is…. Did she make with the screams and bring everybody running as anyone else would do it?” He answered himself. “No indeed, the little brat carefully took the elevator down to the main floor, probably pulled her dress off one shoulder, put eyeshadow under her eyes and staggered all the way across the street into Sardi’s and announced it like a messenger in Macbeth. What a performance! Nothing like it since the Cherry sisters. I was having lunch with Terry and Lawrence…. They’re doing a new show and there’s the dream part for me…”
“Okay, okay,” I said. “Cut to the finish.” He gave me a nasty look but went on with his story….
“Well, you can imagine what a stir there was. The place was jammed to the ears. Vincent Sardi called the police right away, and everyone tore out and up to her office. And sure enough there she was dead as a door nail. What a crush in that little office. Everyone was there. Stanley and Brock and Cheryl and George…”
“Spare us the society notes. Then what?” I said.
“Well, after a while the police came and all of us except Libby had to leave.”
A policeman wandered about muttering for the crowd to break it up and move along, but after a while gave it up as a bad job because you can’t break up a crowd of actors. They just shift into other groupings. Ted took off his hat, held it in his teeth and pulled out a pocket comb and combed his hair. Maggie and I just stood there watching him. When every hair and wave was arranged to his satisfaction he wiped off the comb, stuck it back in his pocket, carefully replaced his hat and kissed Maggie on the cheek again.
“Well, darling, I’ve got to fly. Let’s have lunch one day. I’ll call you. Be sure and see the morning papers, I think my picture’s in them. Of course Libby hogged most of them. But the lad from the Brooklyn Eagle was very nice. Remembered me from my last picture with Paramount. Bye now.” And he was off down the street headed toward Broadway.
“Let’s have a drink before I vomit.” I took Maggie’s arm and led her into Sardi’s.
CHAPTER FIVE
SARDI’S RESTAURANT IS REALLY just one big room divided by some chest-high partitions with benches or, in the chi-chier places, I expect they would be called banquettes. All the woodwork is dark brown and the chairs and benches are covered with dark leather and the walls are shingled with caricatures of well-known theatrical people. Needless to say, one of me is not included. New ones are added from time to time, I suppose, though I don’t know where they find the room to hang them, unless it’s the ladies’ room.
It was almost empty when Maggie and I came in. Just a few people were scattered around starting the five o’clock jump a little early. Just like we had been doing all day. We sat down and ordered drinks. Maggie shed her mink and pulled off her hat. I lit her a cigarette. She took a deep drag, blew it out and slumped back against the wall. I was slumping some, too; I was feeling definitely let down and very, very tired.
“Anyway it was fun while it lasted.” Maggie smiled at me. “You know I feel kind of sorry for the old gal. Heart failure. I didn’t know she had a weak heart. I didn’t even suspect she had a heart for that matter.”
“I don’t think it was heart failure.”
“Oh, Timmy, now don’t start that murder game again. You’d think someone had broken your bicycle or something. So you’re not a wanted man…you’re still young…there’s still something to live for…if you’re real good and eat your broccoli you may find another body one day.”
“All the same, did you ever step on a nail when you were a kid?”
“No, I’ve never enjoyed that sort of thing.”
“Well, I have lots of times, and with my full weight on it it didn’t go in even an inch.”
“You can scarcely compare the bottom of your foot with Nellie’s right mammary gland, after all.”
“There’s not that much difference.”
“Well, dear, you ought to know.”
“Oh, shut up.” Then I remembered what Ted Kent had said. “Still, one way to find out—I might ask Libby Drew what the police thought when they found Nellie.”
“Knowing Libby, if it would help get her picture in the paper, I’m surprised she didn’t confess to doing in Nellie herself.”
I nudged Maggie as the front door swung open and Henry Frobisher walked in. We watched him as he slowly came across the room and sat down at a wall table, two away from us. I’d been wondering about him, off and on, all afternoon. Frobisher had billing in the Youth and Beauty Book, too. An appointment with Nellie at three-thirty this afternoon. It was now about four-thirty and had Nellie been alive, he would have been just coming from it.
I’d put Frobisher at around fifty-five and, although it had started creeping back, he was by no means a scratch-bait boy yet. Maybe it was the sunlamp tan, or, maybe, his eyebrows bleached out more than his brown hair, which was graying at the proper places; anyway, his eyebrows blended strangely into his high forehead and made his face look naked.
His newest show, A Kiss Thrown In, starring Louise Randall, had been in rehearsal for two weeks and I couldn’t tell whether it was going badly, or whether Nellie’s death had upset him. No matter what caused it, I have never seen a man look so tired and still move. He sat back, ordered a drink and looked around the room. His gaze finally hit us and he gave us a vague smile. But I wasn’t going to waste any chances to talk to any producers, even if he didn’t have anything for me in his show….
“Wasn’t that awful about Nellie?” I said across two tables.
“Yes, tragic, tragic.” He seemed to be looking right through me.
“I didn’t know she had a weak heart, did you?”
“No. No, I didn’t.” He looked at Maggie. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Lanson.”
“Good afternoon, Mr. Frobisher. How’s the show going?”
“Still pretty rough. We’re doing a bit of rewriting.” Maggie didn’t need a job and I did. I wanted to be in on the conversation.
“Mr. Frobisher, you knew Nellie pretty well, didn’t you? I mean, she cast most of your shows and all that.”
“Yes, I’ve known Nellie for a good many years, fine woman.”
“Well then.” I leaned toward him. “Can you think of any enemies she might have had?”
&nbs
p; “Enemies?” He looked a little startled at that, and I noticed for the first time that his eyes were almost green. “Good heavens no, what makes you ask that?”
“Don’t mind him, Mr. Frobisher.” Maggie pulled me gently back against the wall. “He’s been in so many mysteries, he’s trying to make one out of this.”
Mr. Frobisher picked up his drink and came over and sat down on the bench next to me.
“I don’t understand what you mean. Do you think she was killed? Murdered?”
I had been thinking that to myself ever since I had found her, but now that someone else said it it sounded a little foolish. Something in Frobisher’s manner of asking it, his soft, rather clipped voice, seemed to make my even having thought it vulgar and very corny.
“No, I guess not,” I finally admitted. “But did you ever step on a nail when you were a kid?”
The moment I said it I felt ridiculous.
“No, I don’t believe I ever did. I may have, though it’s been a long time since I was a kid.” Wistful is the word, I think, for the smile that followed. “But what has my not having stepped on a nail got to do with Nellie?”
“Well, you know that thing she fell on, the desk spindle…it wasn’t much larger than a good-size nail.”
“You seem to know a good deal about it.” I could feel my face starting to redden, so I took a quick gulp of my old-fashioned.
“Oh, I’ve been going to see Nellie for about ten years, and that office hasn’t changed a speck of dust in all that time.”
“But I still don’t see why you think she was murdered.”
Maggie was getting bored and she started shrugging on her coat. Frobisher and I helped her.
“It’s pure frustration, Mr. Frobisher. Nellie called him in about a job this morning, and he thinks it’s very inconsiderate of her to die before he got it. Which reminds me. We ought to send flowers. Do you know where the funeral’s going to be?”
“Why yes, I find myself rather in charge. Tomorrow, three o’clock, the Henderson Funeral Home.” He turned to me. “I’d appreciate it if you would be a pallbearer and help get the casket to the station. Her niece is coming up from Hopkinsville, Kentucky, to take the body back there for burial.”